I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I had been using One Year Bible Online, but it was time for a change.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 24-25.

    Today’s passage gives a list of punishments to be given for various offenses. In particular, this is the passage where the concept of “an eye for an eye” is laid out. I want to point out two things about that. The first thing is that “an eye for an eye” defines the line between just punishment and unjust revenge: the punishment for the crime should not exceed the crime. The second is that as Christians our standard is not “an eye for an eye”, our standard is “seventy times seven” (the number of times Jesus tells us to forgive those who sin against us). However, the most important point made in this list of punishments is the statement that the same standard applies to everyone. You should not hold those who “grew up around here” to a different standard than the standard to which you hold “outsiders” (or vice versa).

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I had been using One Year Bible Online, but it was time for a change.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 22-23.

    Today’s passage describes how the priests were to handle the offerings they received as God’s representatives. The important thing about these instructions for us is that the priests were to be careful not to defile those offerings. Those instructions included being careful to avoid handling the sacrifices improperly and appearing to handle the sacrifices improperly. The passage went on to instruct that the things which were offered needed to be first class. You did not get credit for offering to God your second-hand goods. When we make offerings to God we need to give from our best.

    I want to talk a little more about what this means. As I said, this means that we need to offer God from our best. If you would not use it/eat it yourself, don’t think it is a fitting sacrifice to God. That does not mean that we cannot give our second hand goods to the poor. However, we should not expect the poor to be grateful for our gift (If we are the poor receiving the gift, we should still be grateful). To put this another way, we should feel obligated to give back to God in thanksgiving for all that He has done for and given us. Giving things we have used as much as we desire should not fulfill that feeling of obligation.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I had been using One Year Bible Online, but it was time for a change.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 19-21.

    Today’s passage contains more details on how the children of Israel should apply some of the rules God had given them previously. Among the instructions given here were instructions about how they were supposed to care for the poor among them. They were told not to harvest the grain along the edges of their fields, leaving it there for the poor. There were a couple of other things in this instruction. The point is that they were to leave the poor the opportunity to work to provide for themselves. Actually, as I read it, it was intended that they were to create opportunities for the poor to work to provide for themselves. A little later they are instructed not to favor the poor in legal matters, but neither are they to be partial to the rich and powerful. Overall, I think the passage makes it clear that God wishes us to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to provide for their, and their family’s, needs.

    There are two ways this applies. First, we should run our businesses in such a way as to leave opportunities for the poor to make a living “around the edges”. We should not run our business so as to capture every little efficiency and every dollar possible. We should strive for the “high margin” aspects of the business, allowing those less fortunate to capture the “low margin” productivity around the edges. I will note that this allows the more industrious among the poor to perhaps find a way to turn those “low margin” things into “high margin” things and thus move themselves out of poverty. The second way this applies is that the government should not establish laws and rules which freeze the poor out of finding ways to provide for themselves.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I had been using One Year Bible Online, but it was time for a change.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 16-18.

    Once a year, the high priest was to conduct a ceremony of cleansing for all of the people of Israel. It is instructive how this was to be done. First, the high priest needed to make two sacrifices for himself. Then he must sacrifice a sin offering for the people. As part of both of these sacrifices he must purify the Most Holy Place and all of the Tabernacle. Once he has done this he places his hands on the head of the scape goat and has it driven into the wilderness. I think the scape goat gives us an interesting metaphor. We need to drive our sins from us. We need to drive them out into the “wilderness”. It is not enough to repent of them. It is not enough to make restitution for them. We must drive them away from ourselves into a “place” where we will not go to retrieve them. In this passage the scape goat was a metaphor, although one which was carried out literally. When I say that we must drive our sins away from ourselves, I am not talking about resurrecting this metaphor (or something similar). I am talking about a psychological process whereby we recognize the damage and danger of our sins and do not make excuses to continue them.

    After describing the yearly ritual for purifying the people of Israel the passage goes on to describe a list of sexual sins that are to be avoided at all costs. I am not going to list the sexual sins listed. I want to note that homosexuality is on that list, as is bestiality. However, those sins are the last ones on the list. I read this and it tells me that there are a lot of sexual sins about which we should be more concerned than homosexuality or bestiality. The point here is that we should be equally concerned about all sexual sins. I think we have a tendency to focus on the sinfulness of those sins to which we are not tempted. When we do that we are getting it exactly backwards. We need to focus on the sinfulness of the sins by which we are tempted.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I had been using One Year Bible Online, but it was time for a change.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 14-15.

    In today’s passage it describes what a person who had a skin disease should do when a priest finds that he has been cured. The result of these commands is that the officiating priest has an incentive to find the person cured. On the other hand, the incentive is not nearly enough to encourage the priest to find someone who is clearly contagious as cured. It goes on to address dealing with a house which has become contaminated with mildew or mold (we assume mildew, the word used is the same as the word used to describe skin diseases). We know today that several types of mold are unhealthy and that if allowed to become too prevalent in a house they can never be gotten rid of. Finally the passage discusses actions to make sure that people are not accidentally exposed to the bodily fluids of others. Once more, we know today that many diseases can be more easily spread through exposure to the bodily fluids of someone who is infected with them.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I had been using One Year Bible Online, but it was time for a change.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 10-12.

    Two of Aaron’s sons were struck down for using the wrong fire in their incense burners. This story is a reminder of the importance of fearing God. Aaron’s sons figured that because no person would notice what they did, it did not matter. However, what they overlooked was that the command they violated was not a human command. Rather it was a command from God. God always notices. We need to have the sort of fear of God which this incident surely inspired in those who witnessed it. This passage reminds us to fear God. The best summation of what I believe about fear of God is summed up by this line from the song “Amazing Grace”:

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I had been using One Year Bible Online, but it was time for a change.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 8-9.

    This passage gives us an idea how much work it was to become right with God under the Old Testament. First, Moses had to ordain the priests by making the offerings for them and then purifying them. The ordination took seven days. When it was completed the priests, Aaron and his sons, then had to make a sin offering for themselves. It was only after this that they could start the process of making the offerings necessary to make the rest of the people right with God. It seems that we forget what a wonderful gift Christ provided us by taking away the necessity of following such a procedure to become right with God. I think that we, all too often, fail to understand the magnitude of the gap which separates our sinful selves from God, a gap which can only be overcome by the blood of Christ.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I had been using One Year Bible Online, but it was time for a change.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 5-7.

    This is another passage that I would probably skim over, or not even read, if I was not committed to writing this blog (I apologize from now if this refrain becomes repetitive over the next few weeks). However, the first thing which struck me was that it is a sin to refuse to testify about something which you have knowledge of. We have an obligation to testify about things we have seen, or know about. We should testify if we know something that will exonerate the person on trial and if we know something which will incriminate that person.

    The passage then goes on to describe how to make good when we have defiled or stolen property, or defrauded someone out of value. In these circumstances God’s commands is to make restitution of the value we destroyed for someone else, plus 20%. Then His command was to make an offering to God. While we no longer practice the sacrificial system laid out in the Old Testament, there is still something to be learned from these guidelines. When we steal from or defraud others, we have sinned both against them and against God. It is not enough to restore what we took from them, we must give them more than we took. Then we must make right once more our relationship with God. Fortunately for us, God has since this was written offered the sacrifice necessary to restore our relationship, but we must still acknowledge that we damaged that relationship.